Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield, the two owners of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (based in Vermont), were in NYC on Thursday & Friday handing out free samples of their new flavor named “Bernie’s Yearning” to those attending Sanders’ support rallies.
Cute story done in the cute style Cohen & Greenfield like to use as a marketing endearment. Except that since 2011, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (VTJP) have been negotiating with Ben & Jerry’s to end its long-standing contractual relationship with an Israeli franchise that manufactures the ice cream & sells it in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank & East Jerusalem.
As VTJP pointed out, during Israel’s military assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014, Gaza’s morgues were overwhelmed with bodies of children killed in the bombing & they had to be stacked in ice cream freezers till burial. Meanwhile Ben & Jerry’s ice cream was “passing through Israeli checkpoints, being transported on Jewish-only roads, & being sold to supermarkets & at catered events in those Jewish-only settlements.”
Thousands of individuals & about 250 organizations have urged the company to end its franchise relationship & involvement in Israel’s occupation & settlements but it continues to refuse.
Because the company has no moral qualms about doing business with Israeli apartheid, supporting the military occupation, & promoting the illegal settlements & refuses to end its franchise, in April 2015, VTJP called for an international boycott of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
Please join the boycott of Ben & Jerry’s & like & share this FB wall put up by VTJP appealing to Ben & Jerry’s to get out of the apartheid business.